WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A call by President George W. Bush for Congress to give him the power to use the military in law enforcement roles in the event of a bird flu pandemic has been criticized as akin to introducing martial law.

Bush said aggressive action would be needed to prevent a potentially disastrous U.S. outbreak of the disease that is sweeping through Asian poultry and which experts fear could mutate to pass between humans.

Such a deadly event would raise difficult questions, such as how a quarantine might be enforced, the president said.

"I'm concerned about what an avian flu outbreak could mean for the United States and the world," he told reporters during a Rose Garden news conference on Tuesday.

"One option is the use of a military that's able to plan and move," he said. "So that's why I put it on the table. I think it's an important debate for Congress to have."

The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 bans the military from participating in police-type activity on U.S. soil.

But Dr. Irwin Redlener, associate dean of Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health and director of its National Center for Disaster Preparedness, told The Associated Press the president's suggestion was dangerous.

Giving the military a law enforcement role would be an "extraordinarily Draconian measure" that would be unnecessary if the nation had built the capability for rapid vaccine production, ensured a large supply of anti-virals like Tamiflu and not allowed the degradation of the public health system.

"The translation of this is martial law in the United States," Redlener said.

And Gene Healy, a senior editor at the conservative Cato Institute, said Bush would risk undermining "a fundamental principle of American law" by tinkering with the act, which does not hinder the military's ability to respond to a crisis.

"What it does is set a high bar for the use of federal troops in a policing role," he wrote in a commentary on the group's Web site. "That reflects America's traditional distrust of using standing armies to enforce order at home, a distrust that's well-justified."

Healy said soldiers are not trained as police officers, and putting them in a civilian law enforcement role "can result in serious collateral damage to American life and liberty."

People who catch the worst strain of avian flu can die of viral pneumonia and acute respiratory distress, according to mayoclinic.com.

The disease has killed tens of millions of birds in Asia.

Last week, the U.N.'s health agency, the World Health Organization, sought to ease fears that the disease could kill as many as 150 million people worldwide.

"We're not going to know how lethal the next pandemic is going to be until the pandemic begins," WHO influenza spokesman Dick Thompson said, according to The Associated Press.

The consequences of an outbreak in the United States need to be addressed before catastrophe strikes, Bush said.

The president said he saw things differently than he did as governor of Texas. "I didn't want the president telling me how to be the commander in chief of the Texas Guard," he said.

"But Congress needs to take a look at circumstances that may need to vest the capacity of the president to move beyond that debate. And one such catastrophe or one such challenge could be an avian flu outbreak."

Should avian flu mutate and gain the ability to spread easily from human to human, world leaders and scientists would need rapid access to accurate information to be able to stem its spread, he said.

"We need to know, on a real-time basis, the facts, so the world's scientific community could analyze the facts," he said.

Bush said he had spoken to Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, about work towards a vaccine, but that means of prevention remained a distant hope.

"I take this issue very seriously," Bush said. "I'm not predicting an outbreak, but just suggesting to you we ought to be thinking about it, and we are."

Absent an effective vaccine, public health officials likely would try to stem the disease's spread by isolating people who had been exposed to it. Such a move could require the military, he said.

"I think the president ought to have all options on the table," Bush said, then corrected himself, "all assets on the table -- to be able to deal with something this significant."

Katrina lessons
Bush began discussing the possibility of changing the law banning the military from participating in police-type activity last month, in the aftermath of the government's sluggish response to civil unrest following Hurricane Katrina.

"I want there to be a robust discussion about the best way for the federal government, in certain extreme circumstances, to be able to rally assets for the good of the people," he told reporters September 26.

Last month, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Bush "wants to make sure that we learn the lessons from Hurricane Katrina," including the use of the military in "a severe, catastrophic-type event."

"The Department of Defense would assume the responsibility for the situation, and come in with an overwhelming amount of resources and assets, to help stabilize the situation," McClellan said.

The World Health Organization has reported 116 cases of avian flu in humans, all of them in Asia. More than half of them have been fatal, it said.

On Thursday, the Senate added $4 billion to a Pentagon spending bill to head off the threat of an outbreak of avian flu among humans. The bulk of the money -- $3 billion -- would be used to stockpile Tamiflu, an antiviral drug that has proved effective against the H5N1 virus -- the strain blamed for six deaths in Indonesia last week.

U.S. health agencies have about 2 million doses of Tamiflu, enough to treat about 1 percent of the population. The money added by the Senate would build that stockpile to cover about 50 percent of the population.

CNN's Deirdre Walsh contributed to this report.

Copyright 2005 CNN. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Associated Press contributed to this report

Bird flu is the next Spanish flu. If you read the scientific reports, the magnitude of the threat quickly emerges.

That doesn't stop the media from covering it up to prevent panic, though.

Stop man, you sound like a retarded conspiracy theorist or some crap. Besides, in the UK at least, the media won't shut up about how hardcore bird flu is. Maybe you should read the newspapers more often?

Stop man, you sound like a retarded conspiracy theorist or some crap. Besides, in the UK at least, the media won't shut up about how hardcore bird flu is. Maybe you should read the newspapers more often?

Yeah and we all know that in the UK they only let the police have whistles for a long long time

People in the USA are way more prone to panic IMHO than people in the UK

__________________
how about a nice hot steaming bowl of STFU!

00110001 00110011 01101011 and damn proud of it!

Squid posted..."curdledvomit is the first +10k guy i actually care about"

Stop man, you sound like a retarded conspiracy theorist or some crap. Besides, in the UK at least, the media won't shut up about how hardcore bird flu is. Maybe you should read the newspapers more often?

Are you stupid, or do you just play an idiot on genmay?

__________________
But women and water are in short supply
There's not enough dope for us all to get high
I hear it gets better, that's what they say
As soon as we sail on to Cane Garden Bay

Bird flu 'could kill 150m people'
A man prepares to release race pigeons in Jakarta, Indonesia
Experts fear birds will carry the virus across borders
A flu pandemic could happen at any time and kill between 5-150 million people, a UN health official has warned.

David Nabarro, who is charged with co-ordinating responses to bird flu, said a mutation of the virus affecting Asia could trigger new outbreaks.

"It's like a combination of global warming and HIV/Aids 10 times faster than it's running at the moment," Dr Nabarro told the BBC.

But the World Health Organisation has distanced itself from the figure.

The WHO spokesman on influenza, Dick Thompson, told a news conference in Geneva that the WHO's official estimate of the number of people who could die was between two million and 7.4 million.

"There is obvious confusion, and I think that has to be straightened out. I don't think you will hear Dr Nabarro say the same sort of thing again," Mr Thompson said.

Bird flu has swept through poultry and wild birds in Asia since 2003.

It has killed huge numbers of birds and led to more than 60 human deaths.

"The range of deaths could be anything between 5m and 150m," the UN's new co-ordinator for avian and human influenza said in his BBC interview.

Dr Nabarro said he stood by the figure drawn from the work of epidemiologists around the world.

"My reason for giving the higher figure is simply that I want to be sure that when this next flu pandemic does come along, that we are prepared for the worst as well as for the mildest," he said.

In an earlier interview with the BBC, he said the likelihood that the Asian virus could mutate and jump to humans was high.

"The consequences in terms of human life when the pandemic does start are going to be extraordinary and very damaging," he said.

Because it has moved to wild migratory birds there is a possibility "that the first outbreak could happen even in Africa or in the Middle East", he warned.

The comments came as agriculture ministers from the Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean) endorsed a three-year plan to combat the spread of the virus, and pledged $2m to fund research and training.

H5N1 BIRD FLU VIRUS
Principally an avian disease, first seen in humans in Hong Kong, 1997
Almost all human cases thought to be contracted from birds
Isolated cases of human-to-human transmission in Hong Kong and Vietnam, but none confirmed

Dr Nabarro said the number of deaths from any future influenza pandemic would depend on where it started, how quickly it was discovered and the kind of response they got from governments.

"I believe that the work we're doing over the next few months will make the difference between, for example, whether the next pandemic leads us in the direction of 150 or in the direction of five."

The appointment of Dr Nabarro is an indication of how seriously the UN is taking the threat, the BBC's UN correspondent Suzannah Price says.

In his new role, he is meant to ensure the UN has a co-ordinated response to bird flu and that it helps global efforts to prepare for any human flu pandemic, our correspondent says.

__________________
But women and water are in short supply
There's not enough dope for us all to get high
I hear it gets better, that's what they say
As soon as we sail on to Cane Garden Bay